Category: Flash

This was a couple of months back now but due to the stress and commitments involved with writing a thesis I haven’t had a chance to write about the Kinetica Art Fair yet.

I attended the fair in 2012 as a volunteer and really enjoyed the atmosphere and talking to the various makers and creators of the different kinetic and digital artworks. However this year there was a distinct change to the feel of the event, which I feel had something to do with the presence of prices alongside all the works and the introduction of an auction.

As an artist myself I understand the importance of being able to sell and market your artwork, and yet this consumer element did take away the approachability of some of the exhibitors and seemed to turn the fair from a showcase of great works and ideas to a market place.

My favourite work of the fair was by Krzysztof Jagieło. The piece, called Destrukt, demonstrates the breakdown of social constructs via the destruction of an object being burnt. An animation of a table and chairs interacts with the burning object, with the levels of light and dark as the object disintegrates affecting the formation of the table and chairs. The table and chairs set up represents the formations of society and in my opinion domesticity and order. The process depends on the way in which the initial object is burning, so each time the destruction of this social formation will be different. As the destruction of the burning object escalates, the chaos is represented by the increase in the movement of the domestic scene. This work seems particularly poignant currently as large majority of the world is in a state of flux and upheaval, with literal manifestations of this piece of work taking the form of events such as the London riots.

The film below shows the work in action and gives a better description of the technology behind the work:

Highlights also included:

Angel by Chris Levine consisted of a horizontal line of small green lights, which when you moved your head quickly to the left or the right, the above image could be seen. The work deals with ideas of visual perception.

Roseline de Thelin’s light sculpture Columba, created out of cut fibreglass strands, reminds me of some kind of portal or science fiction tele porter, or perhaps even a tube in which the being has been trapped and frozen.

Using a zoetrope technique and strobe lighting this work (not sure who it was by!) played with the way in which our mind perceives movement and fills in gaps to see things in sequence. There was also an even larger version of this type of work by the artist Gregory Barsmian. There is a brilliant visual of the work in action on his website so do check it out.

Alistair Burleigh’s Versus, deals with the connection between natural and virtual worlds. The work uses 360 projection mapping, glass resin sculptures and LEDs.

Work by Jonty Hurwitz, is described as modern day trompe l’oeil, playing with the boundaries between illusion and reality.

The fair was very inspirational, regardless of the shift in atmosphere this year and I would thoroughly recommend to anyone who will be in London in March next year to check the new batch of kinetic artists and art works.

At the beginning of this week, Mon, Tues, Weds, I attended a conference held at Brighton Dome as part of Brighton Digital Festival. The reason I was able to attend was due to a friend winning a ticket but then being unable to go. In return for the ticket I sent her sum up emails of the days speakers and I will attach that below in case it is useful to anyone else and it is definately useful for me to have all the relevant links and comments together and not in my appalling primary school child handwriting!

Day 1

Kevin Warwick:
Really interesting cyborg guy who looks very normal but was a pioneer in getting technology implanted into himself, such a copper implant that would act as a keycard when he entered his work building and it opened the doors and lights for him!

He asked at the beginning of the talk if anyone would like to have an implant of some technological extension of their body and asked for a show of hands, I thought I wouldn’t want something, thinking of some kind of Terminator situation but then he mentioned that most of us have our pets micro chipped and that these class II implants are becoming increasingly common with nightclubs even using them so customers don’t have to pay for drinks, just scan their implanted chip, say in their arm, at the bar and their account is charged automatically.

He also spoke about some research he and some of his students are undertaking into sensory substitution, e.g having magnets implanted in the fingertips which vibrate as you get near to objects and having electrodes in the shape of letters placed on the tongue and the shape of the letter gets transmitted to the brain, both would be beneficial to blind people for instance.

Relly Annet Barker:
She did a presentation about giving presentations and metioned some interesting things like ‘barcamp’ where first time speakers can go to talk about a chosen subject. This talk was particularly helpful for me as I am, like quite a few people out there, shit scared of public speaking!

She also runs Supernice Studio, which I gather is about helping people to get stuff done and to have the confidence to it, the link below is to a project to help give people a kick up the back side over the next 30 days with regards to web content and there are still a few days left to sign up:

Stefanie Posavec:
Data Illustrator working with extracting data by hand, e.g. she goes through a book and counts the number of words and sentences and then represents it by hand or using illustrator. She was very apologetic about not knowing how to code and wanting to learn, I also often suffer from this feeling but really I think she has great way of doing things and I agree with her low tech approach. This is something that I will come back to in a separate, future post.

He did a talk about the Application Cache for html5, I dutifully sat through the whole talk but had no idea what the hell happened in that hour.
I managed to understand that it was something about making sites useable offline and obviously need to look into this!
Although he is part of the team that set up this site for tracking going to events:http://lanyrd.com/Bjarke Myrthu:
He brake danced onto the stage!
He was talking about the fact that people don’t use the internet to mix up genres of use, such as having a film playing with images over the top, he gave some examples:http://moodstream.gettyimages.com/http://stormingjuno.com/
He didn’t use this as an example but it’s that same sort of thing, a linkin park video that uses your facebook photo, it’s quite hilarious!http://lostintheecho.com/
He also is making a website to help people be able to interact all of these mediums, youtube, still photos, sound files, etc togetherwww.storyplanet.comDay 3Gimme 5:
Which is loads of speakers coming on within the hour to talk about what they do or an idea for 5 mins
Will just list the most interesting onesLuke Whittakerhttp://www.stateofplaygames.com/blog/Adam Onishihttp://www.onishiweb.co.uk/Pete Hochkinhttp://www.headloose.com/Maikel Sibbaldhttp://www.yellowbirdsdonthavewingsbuttheyflytomakeyouexperiencea3dreality.com/
Then there was Simon Collison for the whole hour
Talking about less being more when putting out web content
He has a music website which the background images are inspired by found records in the street but then he set up these photos to get the ones he wanted
urgh can’t find the music site but thought it was called ‘rushmore’
here is his personal site:http://www.colly.com/
He also mentioned that he loves art using found objects and said he likes the idea of ‘using what’s around and making more of what is little’
His twitter is @colly so maybe tweet him a link to foundism?

Foundism is the site of the friend I was emailing, it asks for submissions for found objects: